Few years ago I read in a magazine about the world famous Terra Cotta Warrior, two years ago I saw a report of it in TV and from that time on I knew: I wanna visit Xi'An.
When I visited China in 2000 I had only 10 days time and I spent all these days in and around Beijing. But I was afraid that I won't have the chance to visit Xi'An soon. More than 15 month later I had the chance. And I took it....
Wendy and I took the train from Beijing to Xi'An. If you take the train be sure that you are at the station at least 30 minutes before the departure of the train. Millions of people are there, a huge place and they check your luggage like in an airport.
Our train left in the late afternoon, so we took a sleeping car. Two other possibilies are 'Hard-seater' and 'Soft-seater'. If you take a sleeping car you can choose between three levels. 1st, 2nd and 3rd level. Wendy asked me which level I prefer when she ordered the tickets. '1st level', I answered. 'Let me explain the meaning of the levels', she answered. In the sleeping car they have a 'triple bed' but no seat. (just few besides the window) The lowest bed is a 1st level bed, on these beds the travel passengers sit before they go to bed. The bed in the middle is the 2nd level bed and only on the top, in a 3rd level bed, you can sleep and noone watch at you (or sit on your bed) But of course there is not much room between the 3rd level bed and the ceiling. And there is no partition between beds and gangway.
Something else, short time after our departure a conductor collected all the tickets and exchanged it with a plastic card. You have to retain the plastic card because when we arrived in Xi'An that conductor exchanged these plastic cards with the original tickets again.
We got to Xi'An in the next morning and walked just few meters to find a cheap taxi. Unfortunately there was heavy rain and we were glad when we arrived in the hotel. There we didn't stay very long because we planed to stay in that city only for three days and had a full schedule. So we went to the mosque. Very interesting place around the mosque, of course most of the citizen are Hui Chinese. There we had lunch and after a walk in the market (bazar) we went to the mosque. In the afternoon we went to one of the best museum in China, the Shaanxi History museum. Great exhibits, a must to visit. In the evening we walked around in downtown and admired sights like the bell tower or the city wall.
At the next day we took a bus to a village where the world famous Terra Cotta Warrior is located. First of all, i was very surprised that I could take photos, in my travel guide I read it is forbidden to take photos. In my travelongue you can see some of these photos. We spent some hours there so try to be there as early as possible.
At the next day we wanted to leave Xi'An in the evening but suddenly a friend of Wendy called her. No tickets available, he said. (I was confused, I thought we have them already) So we had some more time to visit sights like:
The wild goose pagode. The South and West gate of the City Wall and some more markets or museums...
A nice gesture of the friend of Wendy. Because he couldn't hand over the tickets to Beijing on time (but one day later) he gave each of us a box with four Terrakotta Warrior in it. To say sorry.... That's China....
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